In a bit of a sideways move I have chosen not to go with a Christmas track.  I’ve said before that I am not a huge fan of Christmas music, although I’m as likely as the next person to be singing along anyway.  What I am a great fan of though is live music.  I don’t go nearly enough but I thoroughly enjoy it when I do go. Over the last year I’ve been to see Barenaked Ladies, Black Sabbath and then last week it was Royal Blood.

Going to see Royal Blood was the first time my older boy had been to a gig and he had a great time and as we were driving home he was asking me about bands I had seen live.  The very first band I ever saw live was a band called Twisted Sister and I saw them in 1985 at the Edinburgh Playhouse when I was roughly the same age as my older son is now.  My parents had bought me a ticket and one for my pal and dropped us off at the Playhouse.  I remember the concert so clearly; the excitement, the noise, the smell and the feeling of the bass in my chest.    These memories are over thirty years old now but still incredibly vivid and I’m sure that if I bumped into Lindsay, my pal who went with me, he would have the same opinion.

One of the things we are trying to do in school is to provide children with experiences that will stay with them for years as well.  I spoke in my last blog about a conference I had attended called Leading with Care.  One of the other speakers spoke about the issue of the cost of the school day and how this could be an enormous block to children being able to do the things they want to do.  Through the Pupil Equity Fund and the sterling work of our Parent Council, we as a school, are able to reduce the burden of cost and to work towards ensuring equity of experience for all of our children.  Andrew from Active Schools works with our children every day either before school or during lunchtime, Mr Robbie is now leading our guitar band (with a set of new guitars), the cost of school trips has been significantly reduced and we are planning a whole school excursion to the Science Centre in Glasgow and perhaps the biggest of all – the whole school visit to the Pantomime this week.  We are able to use these funds to ensure our children have these collective experience without the burden of cost and in the words of Curriculum for Excellence ensuring they have ” have experienced the energy and excitement of presenting/performing for audiences and
being part of an audience for other people’s presentations/performances”

I hope when our children meet each other in thirty years time they look back fondly on their trip to the pantomime and remember the shared experience and excitement they had on the run up to this Christmas and for all of their time as part of our school community.

…and far be it from me not to drop in a little bit of Christmas music at the end…